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Monday, December 21, 2015

Have some fun with Short Wave Listening (SWL)

On some of our recent area NET's we have been chatting about Short Wave Listening (from 150 khz to 30 mhz). So I thought I would put together a small primer on shortwave. Many of us got our start as SWL's when we were young and have stories about our favorite experiences and equipment. Personally I have always been intrigued by listening to all types of radio from around the world.

I recently have read and heard many comments on the rapidly disappearing SWL Broadcasters that are being replaced by newer technologies. Don't give up yet, as there are still a lot of communications to be heard. You can easily find quite a few broadcasters and all kinds of utility, marine, aircraft and military communications on the low bands.

There are many ways to listen. From a portable radio right up to high end communications receivers. Most of our HF rigs are great radios for exploring the low bands. Antennas can be as simple as a built in telescoping antenna, a piece of wire, right up to large outside wire dipoles and large commercial antennas designed for the low bands. Take a tune around the low bands, you never know what you might find!

If your interested in radio monitoring in general, I highly recommend The Spectrum Monitor magazine (http://www.thespectrummonitor.com/ ). This is a PDF format magazine written by many of the former editors and writers of Monitoring Times magazine.

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Managing repeater and NET frequencies was a tough problem for me. So I started to keep my notes on frequencies, NET's and Club and Hamfest information here. Over time we have added all kinds of information of interest to Upstate NY Radio enthusiasts. I will also try to update old posts with confirmations and updates as I get new information .I have a broad range of interests and love to share much of the cool stuff I stumble across.

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